South Dakota Legislature Passes Bill That Would Make It A Felony To Expose Officers To Drugs

Overhype

from the 15-years-for-making-an-officer-faint dept

Despite all evidence to the contrary, law enforcement officials continue to pretend being in the same room as dread drug fentanyl is enough to hospitalize officers, if not actually kill them. This myth has been irresponsibly perpetrated by a number of law enforcement agencies. To date, not a single case of contact overdose has been verified by medical professionals or toxicologists.

It would be damaging enough if this irresponsible behavior was limited to law enforcement officials. But it has contaminated legislators at the local and national levels as well, resulting in the sort of stupidity we’re now seeing in the South Dakota House.

Can inhaling a small amount of fentanyl send you into an overdose?

According to medical and addiction experts, and media fact-checks, throughout the last few years, it’s almost impossible. But that research hasn’t stopped the South Dakota Legislature from taking up a bill that would make it illegal for a person to expose law enforcement to drugs that results in serious bodily harm.

HB 1025, sponsored by Rep. Ben Krohmer, R-Mitchell, passed out of the House of Representatives 40-29 on Wednesday and now heads to debate in the Senate.

Rep. Kromer swayed votes to his side by showing a couple of videos of supposed overdoses suffered by officers who had merely touched the substance. But his evidence is false. Neither of the incidents used to gain support for his bill actually showed an overdose. And we can say that without having seen either video because — as stated above — there have been no confirmed cases of contact overdoses anywhere in the nation.

The bill is as dumb as it is short:

Any person who unlawfully and intentionally possesses a controlled drug or substance, as defined in § 22-42-1, and exposes a law enforcement officer, firefighter, ambulance service personnel, Department of Corrections employee or person under contract assigned to the Department of Corrections, or other public officer, while the officer was engaged in the performance of the officer’s duties, to the controlled drug or substance, and the exposure results in serious bodily injury to the officer, is guilty of a Class 2 felony. If the exposure results in the death of the officer, the person is guilty of a Class 1 felony.

For the purposes of this section, the term “exposes” means exposure through skin contact, inhalation, ingestion, or contact with the site of a needlestick or a mucus membrane, including the mouth, eyes, or nose.

Yep. Felony charges for making a cop faint. If this bill becomes law, one can only hope no one charged with this is ever convicted. Class 1 is an impossibility because — once again — there are no confirmed cases of contact overdose deaths. Class 2 should also be considered an impossibility for the same reason, but that all depends on how the government chooses to define “serious bodily injury.” If all it takes is a trip to the ER, then cops who suffer panic attacks while in the presence of powdery substances are going to be able to lock people up for the crime of scaring them momentarily.

Fortunately, the rest of Sioux Falls Argus Leader article focuses on all the evidence to the contrary, delivering fact after fact that counters this ridiculous law enforcement narrative. Speaking to medical experts rather than agenda-pushing cops tends to seriously limit the amount of paranoia that ends up on the printed page.

Even one of the bill’s early supporters — a former law enforcement official — has walked back his support of Rep. Kromer’s literally fantastic proposal.

Rep. David Kull, R-Brandon, originally voted for the bill in committee but pulled his support on the floor, saying after he did his own research, he found officers’ symptoms in the body camera footage were akin to panic attacks, not overdoses. 

“I have seen officers suffer from similar things where they weren’t necessarily injured by something but reacting to a situation that they would have a panic attack or pass out, which I would have never expected,” the former Brandon police chief said. “Fentanyl has been around for a while. It is a dangerous drug. But I can’t find anything that indicates that it is true.”

One down. But that still leaves 40 people in the South Dakota House who believe the fentanyl hype enough to pass a law criminalizing something that simply never happens.

Filed Under: ben krohmer, fentanyl, south dakota